Bloodline: A Novel Read online

  “That is not the kind of work I mean,” Fredo said.

  Nilo looked at him for a moment, then shrank back. He had the fleeting fear that Fredo knew Nilo had been stealing his money and that of the other crew members. He tried to tell himself that it was only his imagination.

  “What do you mean?” Nilo asked. He tried to move sideways carefully to the rack where the great long gaffs that they used to haul in the fish were stowed.

  Fredo laughed softly, almost shyly.

  “Have I ever told you how beautiful you are?” Fredo asked.

  Nilo stopped. He said nothing.

  “I dream of you all the time,” Fredo said. “You and nothing else.”

  Nilo laughed and then spat into the sea.

  “I thought you were a man, Fredo,” he said. He was just out of arm’s reach of the gaffing poles.

  “I am a man, and as a man, I must have you.”

  Nilo felt a shiver run up and down his spine. Where were Paolo and Enzo? He needed help. Fredo was too big, too strong. There was no place to run to. No help could be expected from the wedding guests until late this night at the earliest. And despite the way he made his living, Nilo could not swim. The water had always frightened him.

  Nilo called the names of the other two men. “Paolo! Enzo!”

  Now it was Fredo’s turn to laugh.

  “It will do no good, little thief,” he said. “They feel the same as I. And we have all paid in advance. With all the money you have lifted from our pockets.”

  The two brothers appeared just then in the corner of Nilo’s vision, and he turned toward them, but with just a glance, he could see that what Fredo had said was true.

  Nilo fought them to keep them from catching him. And he fought them while the brothers held him down while Fredo carefully, methodically violated him. He fought them when Paolo entered him, and he fought when Enzo did the same. By then he was bleeding terribly and he felt as though his flesh had been gashed open, just as he had gashed open so many of the fish that they had hauled in from the mattanza.

  They let him lie there on the deck, unconscious, after that. Then, in the heat of the dying late afternoon, they came into him again and again and again, drinking and laughing and singing songs of the sea.

  When the sun went down and darkness covered the waters and they were done with him, the three men threw Nilo into the sea, counting on the predators that always swam around the tonnara boats to finish him off.

  * * *

  IT WAS SPRING AGAIN. Tommy Falcone knew that before he even opened his eyes. He could smell it on the air: a scent dense with lilacs and some other unidentified heavy, sweet flowers, an aroma that somehow managed even to gently, subtly overpower the sick, septic smell of the hospital all around him. Tommy could tell it, too, from the very texture of the air. It felt warm and moist, soft, pleasant, comforting. The worst was over.

  He opened his eyes slowly. The operations were over, they had told him. No more going under the knife. His body would repair itself now, they said, and in a few short months—six at the outside—by Christmas, he would be well enough to go home. Tommy smiled to himself. He almost felt like singing. But he could not do that. It would disturb the other men on the ward, other men far sicker than he, many of them with no hope of ever really recovering, no hope of ever going home.

  Tommy’s eyes were open all the way. Then he remembered. He was not on the ward anymore. He looked around him. They had moved him the previous evening. He was in a private room, a room to himself. He stretched, felt a twinge of pain from the exertion, and laughed anyway. It was the first time in over a year that he had slept in a room by himself. God, he loved it. He loved life.

  There was a robe lying across the end of his bed. He put it on, limped to the window, and looked out. There was an immense green lawn that seemed to stretch on and on forever, spotted here and there by clumps of trees. Tommy laughed again. In his neighborhood in New York City, ten thousand people—maybe twenty thousand—would live in that amount of space, but here there was nothing except for a few robins tugging at their breakfast worms and a couple of squirrels playing a frenetic game of tail-chasing.

  The feeding robins reminded him that he was hungry. For some reason, even that thought amused him, and he laughed again and began to think he had turned into an idiot who thought everything was funny. He wondered how soon breakfast would be served. He turned and walked carefully to the door. Walking was still a new experience to him. He had spent months in bed while his liver, his kidney, his stomach, and his hip bones were being carefully rebuilt, and even now, after all the surgeries had been deemed successful, he walked slowly and cautiously. He made it to the door and turned the knob. It did not open. He went back to the bed to sit down and ponder this bit of information.

  He looked again toward the world beyond the window and noticed for the first time that the window had bars on it. For a moment, Tommy fought back a rapidly rising panic. Then the door opened.

  A nurse came through carrying a breakfast tray. She was old and almost ugly, but she had a cheery manner and she showed her teeth when she smiled.

  “Good morning, Tommy. It’s a beautiful day out, isn’t it? How are we feeling this morning?”

  Tommy noticed that she had not bothered to close the door behind her.

  “I’m fine,” he said carefully.

  “Is something wrong, Tommy?” the nurse asked. “You don’t sound like yourself this morning. And look what I’ve brought you. Remember last night? I asked you what you’d like and here it is. Eggs. Pancakes. Bacon. Even orange juice. And lots of coffee.”

  “Thanks,” Tommy said without enthusiasm. “That sounds good. Real good.” He paused. “Is there some special reason why I’m in here?” he asked. “And why there are bars on the windows? And the door’s locked?”

  The old woman smiled at him reassuringly.

  “Doctor will be in after breakfast,” she said. “He’ll answer all your questions for you then.”

  Then she was gone and Tommy heard the door click locked behind her. It was only after she had left that he realized she had forgotten to give him his shot.

  He was tempted to call after her but decided not to. He would wait until the doctor came.

  He tried to eat his breakfast. The nurse was right: it was all the things he liked, but nevertheless he had no appetite. He was feeling too restless to sit down and eat.

  * * *

  “GOOD MORNING, TOMMY,” the voice said. It had a slight southern drawl.

  Tommy opened his eyes slowly. Had he fallen asleep? It did not seem likely and yet he must have.

  He twisted around until he was sitting on the edge of his bed. The man perched on a chair next to the bed was dressed in the uniform of a U.S. Navy medical officer. It took Tommy a moment to get beyond the uniform, and then he noticed the man himself: he looked young, not much more than Tommy’s own twenty years.

  He nodded briskly at Tommy and said, “I’m Doctor Singer. We haven’t met before.”

  “I don’t feel so good, sir,” Tommy said.

  The doctor half-smiled.

  “I’ve been reading your records,” he said. “It says that you were a very brave man at Belleau Wood.”

  “I don’t remember, sir. I just remember being scared. I guess all I did was what I had to do to stay alive. And not let my pals or the corps down.”

  “In my book, that adds up to brave.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Tommy answered.

  “Now you’re going to have to be even more brave.”

  “Sir?”

  “We made a mistake,” the doctor said. “We’re going to try to correct it.”

  Tommy felt panic beginning to grab at him.

  “I don’t understand, sir.”

  Doctor Singer pulled the chair over to the side of Tommy’s bed and sat near the younger man.

  “I’m not going to feed you a lot of nonsense,” he said. “We’ve given you too much morphine over too long a period of tim
e.”

  Tommy’s panic swelled. He could feel his temples pounding. Growing up on the streets of New York’s Little Italy, he had seen enough of what morphine could do to be scared.

  “Am I a drug addict?” he asked slowly.

  Singer shook his head. “I wouldn’t call it that. I prefer to call it a ‘morphinist.’”

  “What’s that mean, sir?”

  “It means that I don’t think that you have the temperament to be a drug addict,” Singer said. “It means that I think I can cure you.”

  “How, sir?”

  The doctor hesitated.

  “For one thing, we’ve been steadily decreasing the amount of morphine we’ve been giving you. We’ve taken you down from nearly five grains a day about six weeks ago to just a little more than one grain a day now.”

  “That sounds good,” Tommy said. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “That’s another thing that makes me hopeful.”

  “What do we do next?” Tommy asked.

  “We’ve already done it. As of this morning, we’ve taken you off all drugs altogether.”

  Tommy had heard before about what that meant, heard it on the streets of his neighborhood.

  “Cold turkey from here on in?” he said.

  “Yes,” Doctor Singer answered. “The next couple of days might be pretty hard on you.”

  * * *

  NILO SESTA WANTED TO DIE. He wanted nothing more than release. Release from his pain. Release from his shame. He could not live anymore. He wasn’t a man. Not after what had been done to him. He was not a man and he was worse than a woman.

  Nilo let himself sink deep into the sea. It made no difference. The sea was warm and inviting. The Gulf of Castellammare would take him into its bosom, hold him there, not let anyone hurt him anymore, not let anyone shame him anymore.

  Nilo sank until he could go no farther. He was too buoyant. His body was rejecting its watery grave. His body wanted to breathe fresh clean air. Nilo wanted to open his mouth and let his lungs fill with water and sink even deeper down into oblivion. He wanted to, but he could not make himself do it. He began rising, rising not because he wanted to but because of his body’s own natural buoyancy.

  Something brushed briefly against Nilo’s leg, something big and wide and rough. The boy shuddered. Sinking peacefully to the bottom of the bay and dying gently was one thing, but being bitten and hacked and chewed to death bit by bit, piece by piece, by sharks or barracuda was something else again. Nilo kicked out at whatever had bumped into him and began frantically flailing his arms. He rose even faster than he had before. Once he began rising, his body took over from his mind: it had determined to live, regardless of what Nilo’s brain had been planning. He kicked even harder.

  Nilo broke the surface of the sea at first without even knowing it. He took in huge gulps of air before he realized that he was breathing again. His eyes feasted on the moon and stars, as he thought that they had never been more beautiful, that life had never been more precious.

  He trod water unthinking for almost a minute before he remembered that he did not know how to swim, before he remembered that to fall into the sea was automatically to drown, to die. The thought panicked him, and he began flailing the water again frantically, desperate for rescue and yet not desperate enough to call out for help lest Fredo or the Selvini brothers hear him and turn back to finish the job they had begun.

  In his flailing, Nilo turned in a complete circle, and as he started halfway around again, he noticed only a few meters away the dark silhouette of the two tonnara boats riding high in the water.

  Nilo forced himself to calmness. He could not stop his fear, but he could control it, prevent it from becoming panic. He tried treading water again and found that it worked. He was able to remain upright, in place. The only problem now, he realized, was how to get to the boats to keep from drowning.

  But if he went back to the boats, Nilo told himself, he would be delivering himself once more into the hands of his assailants, and that was certain death. He would have to, somehow, get to shore. But that too was impossible. The shore was a mile away at its nearest point. He could never reach it.

  He felt panic rising in his throat like a swollen lump of flesh, and he fought to keep from retching. Perhaps, he told himself, if he could get to the side of one of the tonnara boats and somehow hold on until the rest of the fishing crew returned from the wedding celebration, then maybe he could be rescued.

  Nilo forced the top part of his body to lean in the water, toward the boats, and then tried to use his hands and arms to move forward, just as he had seen swimmers do. The distance was not great, but it seemed to take an eternity to traverse.

  When he finally reached Fredo’s boat, he searched desperately for a safe handhold until he came upon the anchor line dangling overboard. He grabbed the coarse rope and held on with a fierce determination.

  I am alive, God damn their souls. I am alive.

  Time came and went. Minutes passed, then hours. Nilo could hear the sounds of drunken revelry from the three crewmen aboard the boat above his head, and while he waited, his determination just to survive grew and changed into an even more powerful desire for revenge.

  Finally, Nilo grew aware of a change in the activity on the boat. He listened carefully for what was being said but could not make out the words. Then he knew what was happening. Paolo and Enzo were leaving the tonnara and taking one of the smaller rowboats to go back to shore to meet the partying fishermen after they returned from the wedding.

  Nilo waited for the Selvini brothers to leave. A few minutes later, he heard snoring from above his head. Fredo had gone to sleep. Or passed out. Slowly, Nilo worked himself around the boat until he reached the stern, where he could hoist his upper body onto the gunwale and then pull himself completely onto the deck. He lay there on the wet cold wood, gasping and puffing, fearful that he would wake Fredo and yet not really caring if he did so. But Fredo did not wake.

  Nilo crawled forward to the rack where the gaffs were kept and only then stood up. Most gaffs were hammered into a hook, but throughout the fishing season, Nilo had been using a straight spear with a sharp bladed barbed end. He quickly found that tool in the rack.

  He crossed the small deck in three quick steps and positioned himself over the thin pallet where Fredo slept. Nilo gently prodded the older man with the point of his weapon.

  Fredo stirred and Nilo prodded again.

  “Who is it?” Fredo demanded thickly. “What do you want?”

  Nilo did not answer at first. Then he said, “You, Fredo. I want you.”

  Fredo sat up, still not fully aware of what was going on. Nilo did not give him a chance to say anything. He drove the gaff hard between Fredo’s legs. His aim was sure.

  As neatly neutered as any capon or gelding, Fredo screamed, a horrible mixture of pain and anguish. He grabbed at the place where his manhood had been. Nilo laughed and slammed the end of the gaff pole into Fredo’s face. The burly man collapsed back into unconsciousness, and Nilo trussed him up with heavy fishing lines until the older man was immobilized. He took his folding knife from his pocket and slowly began to carve away on Fredo. For the first five minutes, the fisherman screamed, begging for mercy, begging for death, begging for Jesus and Joseph and Mary to help him.

  By the time his screaming had stopped, there was hardly a strip of skin more than three inches wide anywhere on Fredo’s body that had not been sliced by Nilo’s knife.

  The necessary deed done, Nilo sat back on the gunwale and quietly contemplated his work. Fredo was dead now or soon would be. That left Paolo and Enzo Selvini. The brothers would be more difficult, watching out for each other, protecting one another.

  For them, I will need a weapon more powerful than a knife or a hook.

  Nilo began looking through all the cabinets and lockers of the two boats. Occasionally, he had seen the owner on board carrying a lupara—a sawed-off shotgun—and that was what he was searching for. He finally found it hi
dden under the captain’s bunk. Now all he had to do was to get ashore and run Paolo and Enzo to ground.

  Another dinghy was tied up to the other tonnara boat, and carefully holding the shotgun out of the water, he worked his way across the nets to the other fishing boat, clambered into the rowboat, locked the oars in place, and began pulling for shore.

  * * *

  TOMMY FALCONE COULD NOT STOP YAWNING. He tried and could not do it and became very annoyed with himself.

  He rose from his bed and began pacing the floor of the hospital room. It was early afternoon now, and Doctor Singer and the homely nurse and a pair of burly orderlies had been coming and going all day.

  He wondered where they were now and decided they were off drinking coffee somewhere. Or smoking. He wished he could get out of the room and see for himself.

  So far, one day, and it had not been so bad. Maybe the doctor was right. Maybe he was not really a drug addict. Just a “morphinist.” Whatever that was. The doctor had to be right. He was not ever going to be a drug addict. It wouldn’t be fair, especially since it was not his fault. He had never asked for the morphine. They had just shoved the needle in him and kept pumping him full of the stuff all during that horrible three-day trip back from Belleau Wood to the hospital in Paris and then, afterward, during all the operations. It was not his fault.

  God, but his nose was runny. He had lost track of how many handkerchiefs he had used already today, and now he needed another. He was amazed at how many disgusting fluids could come out of the human body, and he wondered how doctors and nurses could stand seeing it all.

  A new set of handkerchiefs came, and somebody—an orderly and nurse he had not seen before—asked him how he was feeling, and Tommy told them that he felt just fine, really okay, there was no trouble.

  He walked over to the window and looked out. Other patients were outside now, walking on the great green lawn, being pushed about in wheelchairs. He crossed himself and thanked God that he was not one of those poor souls who would never walk again. What kind of life did they have to look forward to? He considered himself lucky. All he had to do was to get through the next couple of days and then he would be free.